Council puts out notice for future £3.6m contract
The UK's Birmingham City Council has put out a pipeline notice for a £3.6 million ($4.86m) data center services contract.
Published on May 23, the council is seeking a supplier for "data center and associated services" in a contract expected to run between August 2027 and August 2032.
Details are sparse, but the notice lists data storage services and facilities management services as part of the requirements, and states that it is seeking "small and medium-sized enterprises" for applicants.
The council expects to officially publish the tender at the beginning of February 2026.
Birmingham City Council has been working on migrating to Oracle Cloud for several years, though mostly unsuccessfully.
The BCC began migrating to the cloud with plans to use the Oracle Fusion platform for its finance and HR operations, aiming for a December 2020 launch. This was then delayed to April 2022, which was also missed.
Ultimately, the Oracle project's cost rose from an initial £19 million ($24m) to £38m ($48m), and following ongoing issues BCC announced in June 2023 that it would have to spend an additional £46.5m ($58.7m) to rectify the problems that were being experienced, including being unable to file auditable accounts, as well as being unable to detect fraud for a period of 18 months.
In September 2023, the BCC issued a Section 114 notice, effectively declaring bankruptcy. This was followed by a £149m ($201m) cut from the 2024/25 budget, asset sales of £750m ($1.01 billion), and a capitalization direction of £1.255 billion ($1.69bn).
By August 2024, it was estimated that the migration would cost an estimated £216.5 million ($280.4m) by April 2026.
It is unclear whether the planned data center services contract might suggest a change in strategy for the city council.
Data center providers operating in the Birmingham area include Pulsant, which acquired a data center in the city in March 2025, nLighten, Six Degrees, Atos, and Velox, among others.
SUB1 is also planning a 19MW data center in Birmingham, planned to be available as a powered shell in 2026.
